Thursday, December 3, 2015

ESPN's Dan Dakich made some statements on the air last night that didn't sit well with Louisville fans.

Specifically, Dakich stated that he would not have Rick Pitino as his coach if he were the president or AD at the University of Louisville.

Here's a good rundown of the comments from Eric Crawford of WDRB:

First, of the entire two-hour, five-minute game broadcast, the segment lasted three minutes. Tirico explained its inclusion into the broadcast by saying that it was Louisville’s first appearance on national television, and that a lot of people didn’t know much about the team or the allegations. (Frankly, you can probably expect the same when Louisville first appears on CBS -- on Dec. 26 against Kentucky.)
Tirico then went through a very general timeline of events, not really going into great detail of the allegations, and the various responses of Louisville athletic director Tom Jurich and Pitino.
Then Dakich did what he is paid to do, which is give his opinion. It should be noted, Dakich had said nothing but positive things about Louisville’s team, and Pitino, to that point. And he would say many more positive things before the game was over. He had just finished, before a preceding commercial break, saying that Pitino was perhaps the best player-development coach in the nation.
But on this case, he weighed in by saying this: “There’s so many layers to it. There’s the NCAA part of it. There’s a criminal investigation. To me, it doesn’t matter whether Coach Pitino knew or didn’t know. It shouldn’t happen under anybody’s watch. I’d be a bad athletic director, I know. I’d be a bad president. I would be. But I would not have Coach Pitino as my coach. When these things come out, you just can’t tolerate that as an institution. This isn’t the only thing that, over the last five years, has come out with Louisville. And as a president or athletic director I’d get tired of these things. I have too much respect for higher education and the people who pay to have their kids go to Louisville to allow that. But he is, and good for him. I mean, hey, his athletic director has stood by him. The president initially didn’t but then he ended up showing support. He’s got full support. And if Rick Pitino didn’t have the Louisville job, he’d have another job in two minutes. That’s how good he is. But you can’t have these things continue, no matter how successful your basketball program is, they cloud your university. ”